No ISP Filtering Under New RIAA Copyright Strategy

The Recording Industry Association of America on Friday announced a new strategy in its quest to curtail online copyright infringement — a plan that for now requires no filtering from internet service providers.

"There’s no filtering," said RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth. "We are simply passing along a notice of detection and the ISPs will forward a notice to the subscriber."

Many feared the next stage in the record labels’ war on file sharing would include demands that internet service providers filter out copyrighted material sailing through peer-to-peer protocols — regardless of fair use. U.S. internet service providers and the content industry have openly embraced filtering, and the Federal Communications Commission this summer all but invited the ISPs to practice it.

But the RIAA said Friday that, for the time being, it was not pushing real-time censorship as the replacement for its aggressive litigation campaign against file sharers, which it now intends to wind down.

That five-year long legal effort has seen the RIAA sue 30,000 individuals, most of whom have settled copyright lawsuits out of court for a few thousand dollars.

Under its new proposal, instead of filing lawsuits against a sampling of individuals caught sharing music, the RIAA will send notices to ISPs pointing out the offending parties’ IP addresses. The ISPs, in turn, will notify (.pdf) the alleged offender by snail-mail or e-mail of the alleged violations.

Violators could lose internet access after three or more alleged violations, said the RIAA’s Duckworth. The details are still being hashed out, but Duckworth said a procedure would be put in place for accused users to administratively challenge violations.

The Motion Picture Association of America is also in discussion with ISPs to adopt the same strategy. It has sued hundreds of individuals for online copyright infringement of motion pictures.

"We are not trying to impose a filtering solution at this time on ISPs," said John Malcolm, the MPAA’s piracy chief.

He suggested the MPAA’s new approach could also render filtering unnecessary, although the group has lobbied the incoming Obama administration to embrace filtering as a possible alternative.

"There is no one-size-fits-all solution," Malcolm said. "Filtering may very well become unnecessary."

The RIAA’s Duckworth said New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo facilitated the deal between the RIAA and the ISPs. "We were certainly willing and open to changing our current course," Duckworth said.

Duckworth said the number of letters sent to individuals would far outweigh the number of lawsuits filed.

"People might realize that they are not anonymous. We think they might stop after receiving one notice," Duckworth added.

While peer-to-peer filtering is not part of the latest plan, it could come to the forefront if the RIAA’s new tactics fail, industry executives said privately.

Steven Cohen, Cuomo’s chief of staff, applauded the RIAA’s new direction. "We wanted to end this litigation," he said.

All of the pending RIAA cases, including the infamous Jammie Thomas case, will continue, Duckworth said. It was not immediately known how many outstanding lawsuits were out there. She said the RIAA has not instituted a new lawsuit for months, a claim disputed by Ray Beckerman of Recording Industry vs. The People.

Duckworth said the RIAA reserves the right to sue repeat offenders and it will continue its lawsuit against LimeWire, which is accused of facilitating file sharing.

Public Knowledge, the Washington-based rights group that convinced the FCC to fine Comcast for throttling BitTorrent traffic, was cautiously optimistic about the RIAA’s announcement.

Gigi Sohn, the group’s executive director, said, "We want to make certain that customers are not cut off from their internet service or have their service altered solely on the basis of a claim by a copyright holder that file sharing is taking place."

Sohn added that "we want to make clear that any arrangements between RIAA and the ISPs should not involve the invasion of customer privacy through the filtering of internet content."

The RIAA’s announcement came five years after it expanded its litigation campaign from the Napsers and Groksters of the world to individuals its sleuths detect file sharing on the internet.

After 30,000 lawsuits, the legal landscape involving file sharing remains undecided. Judges across the nation have disagreed on whether simply having an open share folder of copyrighted music on a peer-to-peer network constituted an unlawful distribution, or copyright infringement. Neither the federal appeals courts nor the U.S. Supreme Court has decided the issue.

While most of the lawsuits have settled for a few thousand dollars, the only one that went to trial resulted in a $222,000 judgment against Thomas of Minnesota for sharing 24 songs. Months ago, the judge in the case reversed the judgment, saying he erred when he told jurors they could find copyright infringement if Thomas had an open share folder of copyrighted music.

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